Hot Fudge Frame-Up: A Fudge Shop Mystery (16 page)

“I’ll help.”

He chuckled. “Let me think about it over lunch. This could land us in jail.”

“On our TV show we used a hairpin once to open a safe.”

Dillon stood up and considered the three walls of books. “Most people keep passwords and combinations in a folder next to their computer, which isn’t very smart. Maybe he used books. Was this his home office?”

“Yes. I can go through every book.”

“Good idea, but later. We’re due for lunch with Mom.”

We walked back through the hallway. The gun cabinet made me pause again. I asked Dillon, “Anything more about the rifle found in your truck?”

“No, not yet. I take it this is the cabinet where the gun belongs?”

“Yes.” Something wasn’t right about it. The empty space I’d seen earlier now appeared much smaller. I took a closer look. “Dillon, I swear that earlier there was space enough in here for two rifles. But now there’s only one missing.” I stared at the only sleeve left open, wishing now that I’d taken a much closer look earlier to verify my suspicions.

“What’re you thinking?”

“That Erik or the professor returned a rifle to this cabinet minutes ago. Do you think Erik borrowed Lloyd’s rifles?” Horror struck me like sudden indigestion. “You don’t think Erik . . . ?”

“Was at the lighthouse with Lloyd Mueller? Shot a hole in the floor? Killed him? Don’t let your imagination go too wild. If Erik returned a gun just now, there’s likely a plausible explanation. He’s probably a hunter and borrowed it last season and was just returning it.”

“You sound like Jordy Tollefson now. Logical.”

“Then you’ve now got two men with common sense looking out for you. A good lunch will sort this out. Let’s go eat.”

When we got out front, a red Corvette sat there. Dillon tossed the keys at me. “My mother’s. You drive.”

Dillon knew full well that I had loved his sports car—the one we’d run away to Las Vegas in eight years ago. My head said to say no.

He opened the driver’s door for me. The devil inside me said this was a short ride in his
mother’s
car. It wasn’t
his
car. It wasn’t like I was agreeing to run away and marry him again. But the way he’d kissed me just moments ago . . . I’m a heathen. I got in.

Outside the car, Lucky Harbor wagged his tail. Dillon pointed in the direction of downtown, and the dog cut through Lloyd’s wooded lot.

Dillon said, “You going to let my dog beat us?”

“Not on your life, Mr. Rivers. Hold on tight to your smile, because you’re about to lose it.”

Revving the engine, I ripped around the fountain in front of Lloyd’s house and laid rubber on his long driveway.

Dillon cranked up the tunes.

I was blissful, not thinking about murder or why somebody wanted my fudge contest to fail and to get rid of me.

Then came a troubled lunch at the Troubled Trout.

H
aving lunch with real estate mogul Cathy Rivers should have brought me answers to help prevent Grandpa losing our shop. Cathy was sharp.

Cathy gave me a hug before we sat in a dark booth in the crowded bar area of the Troubled Trout. The seats were already taken on the deck upstairs overlooking Lake Michigan. The privacy was probably good, though. With my plain shirt covered with grass stains and my denim shorts, I felt out of place with Cathy. She still looked like a Miss Wisconsin. In her fifties now, she was my height and maintained alabaster modellike skin and a trim figure that wore a navy-and-white Ralph Lauren top and shorts with élan. Her beautiful chestnut hair sported a striking white stripe starting in her widow’s peak.

Dillon sat next to his mother, discreet about not sitting next to me. But I had to shake my head with amusement as I looked around and saw people staring at us.

Cathy asked, “What’s so funny?”

“I expect the betting cards behind the bar will soon include wedding dates. Why else would Dillon’s mother be here meeting with me?”

She laughed it off, then got to business. “I’m glad you called Dillon, asking to meet. I’m eager to rehabilitate properties here because Door County respects its history. It doesn’t tear down things; it saves them. Usually. And I’m feeling the urge to stay home now in Wisconsin. We’re very similar in that way. We’ve both come home in the past year. We have big things ahead of us.”

That felt unsettling. I wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

The waitress came to take our order. I recommended the deep-fried cheese curds, of course, and the summer cherry-flavored beer made with Door County cherries. This one came from a Belgian brewer south of Madison in Flanders, Wisconsin. My grandmother had told me some shirttail relative of hers ran the brewery.

Cathy was charmed. “I’m looking forward to your fudge contest and dance. I’ve brought along one of my old beauty contest gowns to wear.”

I suddenly felt silly for my inability to settle on fudge flavors and a dress color.

Cathy’s perfect fingernails tapped the table as if calling us to order. “I went to the title office to look up the history of your shop. I also looked at old village meeting transactions and minutes—something which most people don’t think to do. I wanted to find the ‘intent’ of the village’s actions years ago. Mercy Fogg doesn’t actually own your building, but she sort of does.”

“Sort of?” My hands were sweating around my beer glass.

“It appears that almost ten years ago, during her tenure as village president, Lloyd Mueller was going through hard times.”

“The real estate crash and the economic recession were coming on.”

“Yes. Small towns everywhere had to eliminate services, and some even thought about filing for bankruptcy. Lloyd was significant to the village because of all his holdings. If he went bankrupt, that pretty much meant Fishers’ Harbor would, too.”

“There’s too much pride here to let that happen.”

“Shuttered shops affect tourism. So Mercy Fogg worked a deal with Lloyd. To help relieve his debt to the village and pay his taxes, he adjusted the land contract ownership of your shop to include the village.”

“The village of Fishers’ Harbor?” I blinked hard at Cathy and Dillon.

“Yes. Mercy signed it, but as president of the village. So if your grandfather wasn’t making his payments, that means it could revert to the village. The citizens would be able to sell it someday to recoup any tax payments owed the village.”

My mouth went dry. “The village might own Oosterlings’?”

“Technically, it might. But not Mercy personally, no matter what her intent was then or is now.”

“But if Erik decides to quit and she volunteers to step back in as village president, she’d control our bait shop. And maybe Duck Marsh Street. So everything she says is true in a way. In order to get out from under all this, the Oosterlings have to come up with a bunch of money, plus get Erik and Mercy involved with changing the land contract and ownership. I don’t know where to begin.”

I sagged against the back of the booth.

Cathy tapped the table again. “We haven’t seen a will, or the legal documents of his corporation. There could be a trust set up for the bait shop or your grandfather for all we know. Real estate deals are complicated at this level.”

“A trust? How does that work?” I took a sip of cherry beer to help me think, but it wasn’t the same as making fudge. I was at Cathy’s mercy.

“If there’s a trust set up, that means the partners in the trust just take over the assets without a lot of fuss in probate court. There might still be a will in addition to the trust to say where personal items should go after the death, too, but a trust is a common way for people to pass along their property without a huge tax debt and probate.”

“So you think there’s hope that my grandfather might have been named in the trust? Or the will?” The cherry beer began to taste refreshing again.

“Yes,” Cathy said. “They were best friends, after all. Do you know who Lloyd’s attorney is?”

“No, why? I haven’t thought to ask.” I felt stupid.

“That’s the next person you need to talk with. Your village president would know who that is, surely. He has to consult with the attorney to retrieve any of Lloyd’s papers.”

Dillon and I exchanged one of those looks: Something had been fishy at Lloyd’s house earlier. I told her about being there to pick flowers hardly an hour ago and seeing Erik and Professor Faust without a lawyer in tow.

Cathy said, “But perhaps he or she was on the way.”

Our meal arrived then with all local ingredients—fried cheese curds and fresh-caught Great Lakes trout drizzled with raspberry sauce, with side dishes of garden peas and baby carrots.

Dillon explained he’d shown up at the house, looking for his dog. “Erik and Alex took off with no lawyer mentioned. In fact, Alex Faust didn’t even want to hang around. He forgot he should’ve locked up the house.”

Cathy said, “They were snooping around?”

“Yes,” Dillon said. “And perhaps returning a rifle, just like the one of Lloyd’s left in my construction truck that matches some hole in the floor at the lighthouse.”

I added, “But Erik was called to work here, so maybe that interruption caused the professor to forget about the locks.”

Cathy asked for more information about the professor, so I explained his interests.

“Shipwrecks?” she asked in an ominous way. “So he’s intrigued with treasure?”

I explained about John Schultz and the cup. I also added information about finding the chest under my shop floor and how the professor wondered if more hidden treasure existed in all the cabins on Duck Marsh Street. “He’s going to do a little more research for me on the buildings.”

“That’s good. Perhaps I should meet with the professor next.”

A notion flew into my brain like a gift. Dillon had been right; food helped me think. “Lloyd Mueller has what looks like a valuable collection of cups and saucers, all bone china and old, and I’m sure a couple of those cups and saucers are now missing. It’s an odd coincidence that the professor is intrigued by cups found in shipwrecks in Lake Michigan.”

“But it’s all coincidence, unless you can find him red-handed with those cups. I certainly don’t see a professor jeopardizing his job at his university for foolishly lifting a couple of cups from a house.” Cathy considered the information while tasting her first cheese curd. Her face became transformed with a broad smile. “Sinfully good!”

“We make them fresh at our farm. My parents installed their own small dairy cheese processing plant.”

“You’ve got to give me the tour.”

She’d said that on autopilot. There was no way my parents wanted Cathy Rivers or her “bigamist son,” as they still called him, to stop by for a tour.

Cathy read my thoughts. “Well, maybe some other time. In the future.”

We enjoyed more of our trout, and then she said, “What should I wear for my meeting with this Alex Faust?”

I almost dropped my fork.

Dillon nudged her with an elbow. “Mom, I’m going to tell Dad.”

It was gentle ribbing. She elbowed him back. “A woman has to use whatever weapon is in her arsenal.”

I offered, “He likes yellow and aprons, if that helps.”

Dillon chuckled.

Cathy asked, “How are your grandparents doing?”

I told her about their rift. “I don’t think I can bear it if my grandparents aren’t dancing on the docks on Saturday night.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it all within a day or two, Ava. I still have friends in high places, too, if needed,” Cathy said. “The governor, a Wisconsin senator on high-ranking Washington, D.C., committees, and the president of the Harley Corporation. I can get a ride on a hog anytime to talk about the pork barrel in politics. And about the real estate in a tiny Door County village.”

We clinked our beer glasses together in a toast to Cathy’s power.

When the waitress came to check on us, she asked, “Did you want to get in on the pools?” She meant the betting pools behind the bar.

Dillon said, “Betting on when the lake ice will form next winter?”

The waitress enjoyed that. “No. Let me get the cards. I thought you would have heard by now.”

She went to the bar, collected the betting cards from Erik, and then came back.

Several names with dollar amounts filled the squares on the cards. “This one is betting on the fudge contestants—and I’m losing! It looks like at least two-to-one odds for Piers and Kelsey.”

The waitress said, “Actually, it’s ten-to-one for Kelsey and six-to-one for Piers at the moment. You’re at twenty-to-one odds to lose. So the payoff for you would be really good if you ended up winning. It’s a five-buck minimum if you want to put your name down in a square.”

I exchanged my card with Dillon’s card. His was worse! I said, “This is about who I’ll take as my date to the adult prom!”

Several unknown people—probably tourists here for the week’s fudge festival bargains at local businesses—had grabbed squares and listed all sorts of men around town, including Dillon, Sam, even Cody and the sheriff. There was a square that said
Hot apron babe
, and it was marked with twenty dollars.

“I know who that is. The chubby, bearded fisherman. Ach. Is he winning?” I looked up in fear at the waitress.

“Oh no. Al Kvalheim is winning. He’s bought the most squares, locking in the odds for a sure win so far.”

I cringed, but Dillon said, “Al probably cleans up well after his many hours underground. He’s actually a nice guy. I bet if you ask, he’d even give up smoking on Saturday night.”

My neck prickled in a panic attack. “Al’s my grandparents’ age and he’s got arthritis in his knees from crawling down into manholes for over thirty years.”

The waitress collected the betting cards. “I guess that’s a no from you on putting down a bet.”

“A definite no.”

After the waitress left, Cathy said, “Let me put in a good word for my son. He’s a good dancer, doesn’t smoke, and since everybody’s betting on you two anyway, why not put some big money down on yourselves and win the whole pot?”

Dillon draped an arm around his mother’s shoulders. “That’s my mom, ever the practical businesswoman looking for ways to make money.”

He got up and pulled out his wallet. “And I think it’s a good idea. I’ll be back.”

“Dillon!” I called out, but too late. He was at the bar putting down who knows what kind of cash on us dancing on Saturday night.

I got back to business with Cathy. I mentioned that nobody seemed to know who the mysterious person was who’d made an offer on the harbor area and Duck Marsh Street. “Do you think Lloyd meant all along that the mystery owner was the village? It’s not a real person?”

“Could be,” Cathy said. “That would explain why nobody’s spilled the beans on that. I should be able to confirm these things with a few phone calls or visits at county and village offices.”

We decided that she’d stay after lunch to talk with Erik, and then find the professor. I still wanted to talk with Erik and Professor Faust, too, but I’d wait to hear back from Cathy before following through. This distrust of the professor felt wrongheaded to me, but we’d seen him only an hour ago with Erik Gustafson, acting strangely. Perhaps the next person I needed to talk with was Piers Molinsky, who had tried to bribe Erik. Little Fishers’ Harbor was the hub of some huge conspiracy, apparently involving my little shop.

* * *

I returned to a packed Oosterlings’ shortly before one o’clock. The Butterflies were fingering everything as usual. Their little-girl squeals erupted from behind shelving aisles.

The men were as bad in the bait shop. My grandfather was answering questions about spinners and what weight of fishing line to use for coho salmon, trout, and bass out on the Great Lakes. As soon as I donned an apron—a pretty thing dotted with embroidered lilac blossoms—the men began giving me furtive glances.

Cody’s fingers were flying as he tied pink ribbons around packages of Cinderella Pink Fudge. Then he stuffed wrapped pieces of fudge into apron pockets.

I asked, “What’re you doing, Ranger?”

“Miss Oosterling, we’re getting calls for birthday gift orders, even from out of state. I even got one from your La-La Land.”

Dotty and Lois trotted in from the back hallway, each loaded with a stack of aprons, even frillier than the first batch they’d brought me. Lace abounded like snowdrifts in my shop.

Dotty, dressed in a bright pink sequined T-shirt, put her stack down on the corner of the counter. She was puffing. “We sewed these fast today.”

“What’s going on, Dotty?”

“Oh, Ava, word has gotten out about fudge and aprons being sexy and the aprons are selling like hotcakes.”

Cody said, “Sam told me that there’s a picture of your fudge and you in an apron on some sexy Web site, but I didn’t look, I promise.”

Sexy Web site? I groaned.

Dotty said, “Young Cody called me in panic while you were out this morning because he sold out of your aprons. So we made a deal. I hope you don’t mind.”

“What deal?”

Lois nodded. “We turned our prayer chain into a fudge and apron chain. Our church ladies’ organization is getting a cut from the apron sales here.”